Science Express train to create awareness on climate change

Allahabad: The Indian Railways has brought out a special train called the ‘Science Express Climate Action Special’ (SECAS) to educate and create awareness among people about the environment. The train will roll into the station on Monday and remain there for four days.

The train was launched with combined efforts from the ministry of railways, the department of science and technology, the ministry of forest and climate change (MoEFCC), and the ministry of environment, according to a TOI report.

The train has 16 coaches in total, each of which is based on a particular theme based on climate change and its impacts, adaptation to these changes, mitigation on these grounds, emission reduction, and international negotiations on climate change. The themes also emphasize the role played by government institutions, organisations, schools and students in restoring environmental balance.

The Centre for Environment and Education (CEE) has set up an exhibition on eight coaches of the train on behalf of the MoEFCC.

The first coach describes climate as a system and shows how the current changes in nature is caused by humans. It deals with the greenhouse gas effect and the reasons for climate change.

The second coach shows the effects of climate change— the effect of temperature rise causing rise in sea level and variations in monsoon.

The third and fourth coaches depict the concept of adaptation to deal with climate change with examples from daily life. Strategies for adaptation are showcased along with field-work stories. The adaptation actions taken by India and the varying options for adaptation in urban and rural settings are also shown.

The fifth and sixth coaches discuss mitigation strategies which can lessen the climate change effects.

The seventh coach will introduce visitors to the international negotiations on climate change, including information on the Paris Agreement, the role of the United Nations, the work by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and international roadmaps to deal with climate change.

The eighth coachdeals with carbon handprint, which refers to the positive things one does towards reducing the effect their carbon footprint. It gives information on the changes a person can make in their lifestyle at home, school or in their workplace, towards this end. The key message it holds is ‘Increase you Handprint, decrease your footprint.’

The Science Express Climate Action Special was jointly inaugurated at the New Delhi Safdarjung Station on October 15, by railways minister Suresh Prabhu, minister of science and technology and earth sciences Harsh Vardhan and minister of state for environment Prakash Javadekar.

The Science Express is scheduled to travel across the country for seven months, halting at 64 locations in 30 states covering 19,800 kms.

The sea level may rise twice as high by 2100 as previously estimated as a result of climate change, a new NASA study says.

According to the findings detailed in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, arise in sea level may increase by up to 65 centimetres in the next 80 years, enough to cause significant problems for coastal cities, Space.com reported on Friday.

Sea levels are rising due to climate change: NASA. Wikimedia Commons

“This is almost certainly a conservative estimate,” said Steve Nerem, Professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder, who led the NASA Sea Level Change team that conducted the study.

This acceleration has been driven mainly by increased ice melting in Greenland and Antarctica, the study said.

The findings are based on 25 years of NASA and European satellite data.

Sea levels are constantly rising which is a matter of great concern. www.austradesecure.com

“Our extrapolation assumes that sea level continues to change in the future as it has over the last 25 years. Given the large changes we are seeing in the ice sheets today, that is not likely,” Nerem said in a statement.

Rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere increase the temperature of air and water, which causes sea level to rise in two ways.

First, warmer water expands, and this “thermal expansion” of the ocean has contributed about half of the seven centimetres of global mean sea level rise that has been observed over the past 25 years, Nerem said.

Second, the water from melting land ice flows into the ocean, which also increases sea level around the world. The rate of sea level rise has risen from about 2.5 millimetres per year in the 1990s to about 3.4 millimetres per year today, the researchers said.

NASA constantly monitors climate change and its effects.

These increases have been measured by satellite altimeters since 1992, including the TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1, Jason-2, and Jason-3 missions, which have been jointly managed by NASA, France’s Centre national d’etudes spatiales, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The researchers said that the speed of the acceleration can be affected by geological events such as volcanic eruptions or by climate patterns such as El Nino and La Nina.

They used climate models and other data sets to account for the volcanic effects and to determine the El Nino /La Nina effects, ultimately uncovering the underlying rate and acceleration of sea level rise. IANS